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I’ve struggled with the what-about-ism there as well. When researching it I’ve found there are some differences, particularly about degree of openness towards the people targeted:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar...

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Both campaigns misused data in an attempt to win votes. They are equally bad.

At the end, it states that neither campaign were able to persuade many voters. If that's the case, why do we care?

One campaign did it with consent. The other did not. That's not equal.

This seems false. The root of the problem is the FB API used to grant you access to friend-of-friend data. This capability is what led to the possibility of having a million sign ups get you data on the entire US. Those people mined through second order links did not give consent.

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